Yankees’ Netflix debut is latest example of sports’ complicated TV landscape. The headline of this Andrew Marchand piece in the Athletic says it all. Did you know the Yankees’ regular-season games shuffle between eight different television outlets?
The Yanks are big enough that casual fans will find them here and there, and I guess that’s what outlets like Netflix are after: “Look, it’s the New York Yankees! Baseball on Netflix!”
But regular Yankees fans (like me) are not going to hunt down a single game on a random streaming service to catch one one-hundred-sixty-second of the season. It’s not enjoyable, and in truth, it’s not important enough. When the Yanks are not on their main broadcast outlet, even though I can usually figure out how to access the game, I often just skip it.
Yankees President Randy Levine acknowledges the frustration, and blames the league: “We would love to have all the games on YES and Amazon. We are part of MLB and they are allowed to place games on their national platforms. I feel bad for fans who have trouble finding the games and have to pay for additional subscriptions to watch the games.” MLB (and, apparently, YouTube) are hoping for a resolution to this in a few years, but in the meantime, it just degrades the experience.
Everything I think and feel about this issue is reflected in the article. Thanks for the catharsis, Andrew.